Phaethon: Loose Thoughts for Loose Thinkers

“By Apollo!” said Alcibiades, “this language is more fit for the tripod in Delphos, than for the bema in the Pnyx.  So fare-thee-well, thou Pythoness!  I must go and con over my oration, at least if thy prophesying has not altogether addled my thoughts.”

But I, as soon as Alcibiades was gone, for I was ashamed to speak before, turning to Socrates said to him, all but weeping:

“Oh Socrates, what cruel words are these which you have spoken?  Are you not ashamed to talk thus contemptuously to one like me, even though he be younger and less cunning in argument than yourself; knowing as you do, how, when I might have grown rich in my native city of Rhodes, and marrying there, as my father purposed, a wealthy merchant’s heiress, so have passed my life delicately, receiving the profits of many ships and warehouses, I yet preferred Truth beyond riches; and leaving my father’s house, came to Athens in search of wisdom, dissipating my patrimony upon one sophist after another, listening greedily to Hippias, and Polus, and Gorgias, and Protagoras, and last of all to you, hard-hearted man that you are?  For from my youth I loved and longed after nothing so much as Truth, whatsoever it may be; thinking nothing so noble as to know that which is Right, and knowing it, to do it.  And that longing, or love of mine, which is what I suppose Protagoras meant by the spirit of truth, I cherished as the fairest and most divine possession, and that for which alone it was worth while to live.  For it seemed to me, that even if in my search I never attained to truth, still it were better to die seeking, than not to seek; and that even if acting by what I considered to be the spirit of truth, and doing honestly in every case that which seemed right, I should often, acting on a false conviction, offend in ignorance against the absolute righteousness of the gods, yet that such an offence was deserving, if not of praise for its sincerity, yet at least of pity and forgiveness; but by no means to be classed, as you class it, with the appetites of brutes; much less to be threatened, as you threaten it, with infinite and eternal misery by I know not what necessary laws of Zeus, and to be put off at last with some myth or other about Prometheus.  Surely your mother bare you a scoffer and pitiless, Socrates, and not, as you boast, a man-midwife fit for fair youths.”

Then, smiling sweetly, “Dear boy,” said he, “were I such as you fancy, how should I be here now, discoursing with you concerning truth, instead of conning my speech for the Pnyx, like Alcibiades, that I may become a demagogue, deceiving the mob with flattery, and win for myself houses, and lands, and gold, and slave-girls, and fame, and power, even to a tyranny itself?  For in this way I might have made my tongue a profitable member of my body; but now, being hurried up and down in barren places, like one mad of love, from my longing after fair youths, I waste my speech on them; receiving, as is the wont of true lovers, only curses and ingratitude from their arrogance.  But tell me, thou proud Adonis—This spirit of truth in thee, which thou thoughtest, and rightly, thy most noble possession—did it desire truth, or not?”

P.  “But, Socrates, I told you that very thing, and said that it was a longing after truth, which I could not restrain or disobey.”

S.  “Tell me now, does one long for that which one possesses, or for that which one does not possess?”

P.  “For that which one does not possess.”

S.  “And is one in love with that which is oneself, or with that which is not?”

P.  “With that which is not oneself, thou mocker.  We are not all, surely, like Narcissus?”

S.  “No, by the dog! not quite all.  But see now: it appears that when any one is in love with a thing, and longs for it, as thou didst for truth, it must be something which is not himself, and which he does not possess?”

P.  “True.”

S.  “You, then, while you were loving facts as they are, and longing to see them as they are, yet did not possess that which you longed for?”

P.  “True, indeed; else why should I have been driven forth by the anger of the gods, like Bellerophon, to pace the Aleian plain, eating my own soul, if I had possessed that for which I longed?”

S.  “Well said, dear boy.  But see again.  This truth which you loved, and which was not yourself or part of yourself, was certainly also nothing of your own making?—Though they say that Pygmalion was enamoured of the statue which he himself had carved.”

P.  “But he was miserable, Socrates, till the statue became alive.”

S.  “They say so; but what has that to do with the argument?”

P.  “I know not.  But it seems to me horrible, as it did to Pygmalion, to be enamoured of anything which cannot return your love, but is, as it were, your puppet.  Should we not think it a shameful thing, if a mistress were to be enamoured of one of her own slaves?”

S.  “We should; and that, I suppose, because the slave would have no free choice whether to refuse or to return his mistress’s love; but would be compelled, being a slave, to submit to her, even if she were old, or ugly, or hateful to him?”

P.  “Of course.”

S.  “And should we not say, Phaethon, that there was no true enjoyment in such love, even on the part of the mistress; nay, that it was not worthy of the name of love at all, but was merely something base, such as happens to animals?”

P.  “We should say so rightly.”

S.  “Tell me, then, Phaethon—for a strange doubt has entered my mind on account of your words.  This truth of which you were enamoured, seems, from what has been agreed, not to be a part of yourself, nor a creation of your own, like Pygmalion’s statue—how then has it not happened to you to be even more miserable than Pygmalion till you were sure that truth loved you in return?—and, moreover, till you were sure that truth had free choice as to whether it should return or refuse your love?  For, otherwise, you would be in danger of being found suffering the same base passion as a mistress enamoured of a slave who cannot resist her.”

P.  “I am puzzled, Socrates.”

S.  “Shall we rather say, then, that you were enamoured, not of truth itself, but of the spirit of truth?  For we have been all along defining truth to be ‘facts as they are,’ have we not?”

P.  “We have.”

S.  “But there are many facts as they are, whereof to be enamoured would be base, for they cannot return your love.  As, for instance, that one and one make two, or that a horse has four legs.  With respect to such facts, you would be, would you not, in the same position as a mistress towards her slave?”

P.  “Certainly.  It seems, then, better to assume the other alternative.”

S.  “It does.  But does it not follow, that when you were enamoured of this spirit, you did not possess it?”

P.  “I fear so, by the argument.”

S.  “And I fear, too, that we agreed that he only who possessed the spirit of truth saw facts as they are; for that was involved in our definition of the spirit of truth.”

P.  “But, Socrates, I knew, at least, that one and one made two, and that a horse had four legs.  I must then have seen some facts as they are.”

S.  “Doubtless, fair boy; but not all.”

P.  “I do not pretend to that.”

S.  “But if you had possessed the spirit of truth, you would have seen all facts whatsoever as they are.  For he who possesses a thing can surely employ it freely for all purposes which are not contrary to the nature of that thing; can he not?”

P.  “Of course he can.  But if I did not possess the spirit of truth, how could I see any truth whatsoever?”

S.  “Suppose, dear boy, that instead of your possessing it, it were possible for it to possess you; and possessing you, to show you as much of itself, or as little, as it might choose, and concerning such things only as it might choose: would not that explain the dilemma?”

P.  “It would assuredly.”

S.  “Let us see, then, whether this spirit of truth may not be something which is capable of possessing you, and employing you, rather than of being possessed and employed by you.  To me, indeed, this spirit seems likely to be some demon or deity, and that one of the greatest.”

P.  “Why then?”

S.  “Can lifeless and material things see?”

P.  “Certainly not; only live ones.”

S.  “This spirit, then, seems to be living; for it sees things as they are.”

P.  “Yes.”

S.  “And it is also intellectual; for intellectual facts can be only seen by an intellectual being.”

P.  “True.”

S.  “And also moral; for moral facts can only be seen by a moral being.”

P.  “True also.”

S.  “But this spirit is evidently not a man; it remains therefore, that it must be some demon.”

P.  “But why one of the greatest?”

S.  “Tell me, Phaethon, is not God to be numbered among facts as they are?”

P.  “Assuredly; for he is before all others and more eternal and absolute than all.”

S.  “Then this spirit of truth must also be able to see God as he is.”

P.  “It is probable.”

S.  “And certain, if, as we agreed, it be the very spirit which sees all facts whatsoever as they are.  Now tell me, can the less see the greater as it is?”

P.  “I think not; for an animal cannot see a man as he is, but only that part of him in which he is like an animal, namely, his outward figure and his animal passions; but not his moral sense or reason, for of them it has itself no share.”

S.  “True; and in like wise, a man of less intellect could not see a man of greater intellect than himself as he is, but only a part of his intellect.”

P.  “Certainly.”

S.  “And does not the same thing follow from what we said just now, that God’s conceptions of himself must be the only perfect conceptions of him?  For if any being could see God as he is, the same would be able to conceive of him as he is: which we agreed was impossible.”

P.  “True.”

S.  “Then surely this spirit which sees God as he is, must be equal with God.”

P.  “It seems probable; but none is equal to God except himself.”

S.  “Most true, Phaethon.  But what shall we say now, but that this spirit of truth, whereof thou hast been enamoured, is, according to the argument, none other than Zeus, who alone comprehends all things, and sees them as they are, because he alone has given to each its inward and necessary laws?”

P.  “But, Socrates, there seems something impious in the thought.”

S.  “Impious, truly, if we held that this spirit of truth was a part of your own self.  But we agreed that it was not a part of you, but something utterly independent of you.”

P.  “Noble would the news be, Socrates, were it true; yet it seems to me beyond belief.”

S.  “Did we not prove just now concerning Zeus, that all mistakes concerning him were certain to be mistakes of defect?”

P.  “We did, indeed.”

S.  “How do you know, then, that you have not fallen into some such error, and have suspected Zeus to be less condescending towards you than he really is?”

P.  “Would that it were so!  But I fear it is too fair a hope.”

S.  “Do I seem to thee now, dear boy, more insolent and unfeeling than Protagoras, when he tried to turn thee away from the search after absolute truth, by saying sophistically that it was an attempt of the Titans to scale heaven, and bade thee be content with asserting shamelessly and brutishly thine own subjective opinions?  For I do not bid thee scale the throne of Zeus, into whose presence none could arrive, as it seems to me, unless he himself willed it; but to believe that he has given thee from thy childhood a glimpse of his own excellence, that so thy heart, conjecturing, as in the case of a veiled statue, from one part the beauty of the rest, might become enamoured thereof, and long for that sight of him which is the highest and only good, that so his splendour may give thee light to see facts as they are.”

P.  “Oh Socrates! and how is this blessedness to be attained?”

S.  “Even as the myths relate, the nymphs obtained the embraces of the gods; by pleasing him and obeying him in all things, lifting up daily pure hands and a thankful heart, if by any means he may condescend to purge thine eyes, that thou mayest see clearly, and without those motes, and specks, and distortions of thine own organs of vision, which flit before the eyeballs of those who have been drunk over-night, and which are called by sophists subjective truth; watching everywhere anxiously and reverently for those glimpses of his beauty, which he will vouchsafe to thee more and more as thou provest thyself worthy of them, and will reward thy love by making thee more and more partaker of his own spirit of truth; whereby, seeing facts as they are, thou wilt see him who has made them according to his own ideas, that they may be a mirror of his unspeakable splendour.  Is not this a fairer hope for thee, oh Phaethon, than that which Protagoras held out to thee—that neither seeing Zeus, nor seeing facts as they are, nor affirming any truth whatsoever, nor depending for thy knowledge on any one but thine own ignorant self, thou mightest nevertheless be so fortunate as to escape punishment: not knowing, as it seems to me, that such a state of ignorance and blindfold rashness, even if Tartarus were a dream of the poets or the priests, is in itself the most fearful of punishments?”

P.  “It is, indeed, my dear Socrates.  Yet what are we to say of those who, sincerely loving and longing after knowledge, yet arrive at false conclusions, which are proved to be false by contradicting each other?”

S.  “We are to say, Phaethon, that they have not loved knowledge enough to desire utterly to see facts as they are, but only to see them as they would wish them to be; and loving themselves rather than Zeus, have wished to remodel in some things or other his universe, according to their own subjective opinions.  By this, or by some other act of self-will, or self-conceit, or self-dependence, they have compelled Zeus, not, as I think, without pity and kindness to them, to withdraw from them in some degree the sight of his own beauty.  We must, therefore, I fear, liken them to Acharis, the painter of Lemnos, who, intending to represent Phœbus, painted from a mirror a copy of his own defects and deformities; or perhaps to that Nymph, who finding herself beloved by Phœbus, instead of reverently and silently returning the affection, boasted of it to all her neighbours, as a token of her own beauty, and despised the god; so that he, being angry, changed her into a chattering magpie; or again to Arachne, who having been taught the art of weaving by Athene, pretended to compete with her own instructress, and being metamorphosed by her into a spider, was condemned, like the sophists, to spin out of her own entrails endless ugly webs, which are destroyed, as soon as finished, by every slave-girl’s broom.”

P.  “But shall we despise and hate such, Oh Socrates?”

S.  “No, dearest boy, we will rather pity and instruct them lovingly; remembering always that we shall become such as they the moment we begin to fancy that truth is our own possession, and not the very beauty of Zeus himself, which he shows to those whom he will, and in such measure as he finds them worthy to behold.  But to me, considering how great must be the condescension of Zeus in unveiling to any man, even the worthiest, the least portion of his own loveliness, there has come at times a sort of dream, that the divine splendour will at last pierce through and illumine all dark souls, even in the house of Hades, showing them, as by a great sunrise, both what they themselves, and what all other things are, really and in the sight of Zeus; which if it happened, even to Ixion, I believe that his wheel would stop, and his fetters drop off of themselves, and that he would return freely to the upper air, for as long as he himself might choose.”

Just then the people began to throng into the Pnyx; and we took our places with the rest to hear the business of the day, after Socrates had privately uttered this prayer:

“Oh Zeus, give to me and to all who shall counsel here this day, that spirit of truth by which we may behold that whereof we deliberate, as it is in thy sight!”

“As I expected,” said Templeton, with a smile, as I folded up my manuscript.  “My friend the parson could not demolish the poor Professor’s bad logic without a little professional touch by way of finish.”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh—never mind.  Only I owe you little thanks for sweeping away any one of my lingering sympathies with Mr. Windrush, if all you can offer me instead is the confounded old nostrum of religion over again.”

“Heydey, friend!  What next?”

“Really, my dear fellow, I beg your pardon, I forgot that I was speaking to a clergyman.”

“Pray don’t beg my pardon on that ground.  If what you say be right, a clergyman above all others ought to hear it; and if it be wrong, and a symptom of spiritual disease, he ought to hear it all the more.  But I cannot tell whether you are right or wrong, till I know what you mean by religion; for there is a great deal of very truly confounded and confounding religion abroad in the world just now, as there has been in all ages; and perhaps you may be alluding to that.”

Templeton sat silent for a few minutes, playing with the tackle in his fly-book, and then murmured to himself the well-known lines of Lucretius:

“Humana ante oculos fœde cum vita jaceretIn terris oppressa gravi sub RelligioneQuæ caput a cœli regionibus ostendebat,Horribili super aspectu mortalibus instans.

There!—blasphemous reprobate fellow, am I not?”

“On the contrary,” I said, “I think that in the sense in which Lucretius intended that the lines should be taken, they contain a great deal of truth.  He had seen the basest and foullest crimes spring from that which he calls Relligio, and he had a full right to state that fact.  I am not aware that one blasphemes the Catholic and Apostolic Faith by saying that the devilries of the Spanish Inquisition were the direct offspring of that ‘religious sentiment’ which Mr. Windrush’s school—though they are at all events right in saying that its source is in man himself, and not in the ‘regionibus Cœli’—are now glorifying, as something which enables man to save his own soul without the interference of ‘The Deity’—indeed, whether ‘The Deity’ chooses or not.”

“Do leave these poor Emersonians alone for a few minutes, and tell me how you can reconcile what you have just said with your own dialogue.”

“Why not?”

“Is not Lucretius glorying in the notion that the gods do not trouble themselves with mortals, while you have been asserting that ‘The Deity’ troubles Himself even with the souls of heathens?”

“Certainly.  But that is quite a distinct matter from his dislike of what he calls Relligio.  In that dislike I can sympathise fully: but on his method of escape Mr. Windrush will probably look with more complaisance than I do, who call it by the ugly name of Atheism.”

“Then I fear you would call me an Atheist, if you knew all.  So we had better say no more about it.”

“A most curious speech, certainly, to make to a parson, or soul-curer by profession!”

“Why, what on earth have you to do but to abhor and flee me?” asked he, with a laugh, though by no means a merry one.

“Would your having a headache be a reason for the medical man’s running away from you, or coming to visit you?”

“Ah, but this, you know, is my ‘fault,’ and my ‘crime,’ and my ‘sin.’  Eh?” and he laughed again.

“Would the doctor visit you the less, because it was your own fault that your head ached?”

“Ah, but suppose I professed openly no faith in his powers of curing, and had a great hankering after unaccredited Homœopathies, like Mr. Windrush’s; would not that be a fair cause for interdiction from fire and water, sacraments and Christian burial?”

“Come, come, Templeton,” I said; “you shall not thus jest away serious thoughts with an old friend.  I know you are ill at ease.  Why not talk over the matter with me fairly and soberly?  How do you know till you have tried, whether I can help you or not?”

“Because I know that your arguments will have no force with me; they will demand of me or assume in me, certain faculties, sentiments, notions, experiences—call them what you like; I am beginning to suspect sometimes with Cabanis that they are ‘a product of the small intestines’—which I never have had, and never could make myself have, and now don’t care whether I have them or not.”

“On my honour, I will address you only as what you are, and know yourself to be.  But what are these faculties, so strangely beyond my friend Templeton’s reach?  He used to be distinguished at college for a very clear head, and a very kind heart, and the nicest sense of honour which I ever saw in living man; and I have not heard that they have failed him since he became Templeton of Templeton.  And as for his Churchmanship, were not the county papers ringing last month with the accounts of the beautiful new church which he had built, and the stained glass which he brought from Belgium, and the marble font which he brought from Italy; and how he had even given for an altar-piece his own pet Luini, the gem of Templeton House?”

“Effeminate picture!” he said.  “It was part and parcel of the idea—”

Before I could ask him what he meant, he looked up suddenly at me, with deep sadness on his usually nonchalant face.

“Well, my dear fellow, I suppose I must tell you all, as I have told you so much without your shaking the dust off your feet against me, and consulting Bradshaw for the earliest train to Shrewsbury.  You knew my dear mother?”

“I did.  The best of women.”

“The best of women, and the best of mothers.  But, if you recollect, she was a great Low-Church saint.”

“Why ‘but’?  How does that derogate in any wise from her excellence?”

“Not from her excellence; God forbid! or from the excellence of the people of her own party, whom she used to have round her, and who were, some of them, I do believe, as really earnest, and pious, and charitable, and all that, as human beings could be.  But it did take away very much indeed from her influence on me.”

“Surely she did not neglect to teach you.”

“It is a strange thing to say, but she rather taught me too much.  I don’t deny that it may have been my own fault.  I don’t blame her, or any one.  But you know what I was at college—no worse than other men, I dare say; but no better.  I had no reason for being better.”

“No reason?  Surely she gave you reasons.”

“There—you have touched the ailing nerve now.  The reasons were what you would call paralogisms.  They had no more to do with me than with those trout.”

“You mistake, friend, you mistake, indeed,” said I.

“I don’t mistake at all about this; that whether or not the reasons in themselves had to do with me, the way in which she put them made them practically so much Hebrew.  She demanded of me, as the only grounds on which I was to consider myself safe from hell, certain fears and hopes which I did not feel, and experiences which I did not experience; and it was my fault, and a sign of my being in a wrong state—to use no harder term—that I did not feel them; and yet it was only God’s grace which could make me feel them: and so I grew up with a dark secret notion that I was a very bad boy; but that it was God’s fault and not mine that I was so.”

“You were ripe indeed then,” said I sadly, “like hundreds more, for Professor Windrush’s teaching.”

“I will come to that presently.  But in the meantime—was it my fault?  I was never what you call a devout person.  My ‘organ of veneration,’ as the phrenologists would say, was never very large.  I was a shrewd dashing boy, enjoying life to the finger-tips, and enjoying above all, I will say, pleasing my mother in every way, except in the understanding what she told me—and what I felt I could not understand.  But as I grew older, and watched her, and the men round her, I began to suspect that religion and effeminacy had a good deal to do with each other.  For the women, whatsoever their temperaments, or even their tastes might be, took to this to me incomprehensible religion naturally and instinctively; while the very few men who were in their clique were—I don’t deny some of them were good men enough—if they had been men at all: if they had been well-read, or well-bred, or gallant, or clear-headed, or liberal-minded, or, in short, anything but the silky, smooth-tongued hunt-the-slippers nine out of ten of them were.  I recollect well asking my mother once, whether there would not be five times more women than men in heaven—and her answering me sadly and seriously, that she feared there would be.  And in the meantime she brought me up to pray and hope that I might some day be converted, and become a child of God—And one could not help wishing to enjoy oneself as much as possible before that event happened.”